200+ Clicks on 1 Link - No Conversions

Looking at the clicks per link on Affilotheme redirects page, I see that some of my links have more than 200 clicks, but I have no conversions on the site at all.Is this normal or am I doing something wrong to have no conversions out of well over 500 product link clicks for an Amazon affiliate site.Thanks

18 May 14 7:39 pm
I have some links that get thousands upon thousands of clicks and no sales whatsoever.

I have other links that average one sale every 30 clicks.

It depends on the page on the website, and what sort of audience it is getting.

The links on my site that get thousands of clicks and no sales are ones where people have come for something that is not really related to the product I'm promoting. (I've used it for link bait.) It's like they've come for vegetarian recipes, and I send them to a site about beef.

The pages that DO convert are "product name review" pages and "best XYZ product" type pages. Where people are clearly already interested in buying the kind of product I'm promoting.

In short, there are two main reasons why you might have sent a bunch of clicks but not seen any sales yet...

1) The merchant's sales page doesn't convert. But if you look in Clickbank (if using a clickbank product) and see that the gravity is reasonable (eg, over 10) then this probably isn't the case.

2) Your traffic isn't very targeted to the product. They're not in a buying mood. They might be information gathering.

I recommend that you add tracking IDs to your affiliate links (Clickbank) so that you know which pages are sending the clicks -- if you have the same link on multiple pages.

18 May 14 7:51 pm
Thanks for the response Aletta, I appreciate your input and time.The pages that the links are on are product review pages with "product name review" and "best XYZ product" type keywords. This is an amazon.com affiliate site so the cloaked links go straight to Amazon.com. (I am using Affilotheme). I may have to use tracking ids more heavily to narrow down the pages, but typically, a link is only on one page so I can keep track of it reasonably well. Last check I have over 500 link clicks, but not a single conversion. Much of the traffic is from organic searches.I think I need to learn how to use Clickbank better also :)

18 May 14 10:12 pm
With 500 clicks through to Amazon, I would think that you would see *something*. You get commissions for practically anything anyone buys on Amazon after clicking your link, even if it's a Scooby Doo DVD (true story).

When you look at your stats in Amazon, are you seeing any activity? Not necessarily purchases, but are clicks registering? I wonder if your link is tracking correctly.

If it is registering correctly, it's probably just a matter of time. I have 2.5% conversion on Amazon, which earns me a massive $10/month on average. But Amazon isn't my big earner... just funds my Kindle book addiction :)

I do see some activity in the Amazon reports including some conversions - the conversions are from friends buying from our A-Store I believe.The link click throughs in the Amazon reports do not match the link clicks reported in the Affilotheme redirects link page.Here is the sommary from Amazon:Clicks & Conversion SummaryMay 1, 2014 to May 18, 2014GlossaryProduct Link Clicks 504Other Clicks 39Clicks 543TOTAL CONVERSION 2.39%

The Affilotheme Affiliate Redirects page shows a total of 2,624 link clicks - all should be going to Amazon.com. But the reports don't match up. Am I doing something wrong somewhere?

That's a weird one. Your conversion rate reported by Amazon seems about right. That's about what mine is too.

The fact that "clicks" in AffiloTheme aren't registering in Amazon says to me (and Jonathan, who I'm paraphrasing :) that something is screwy with the way the cookie is being set. For instance, if it was a bot going through the link rather than a real person. The bots would toss the cookie, so the visit wouldn't be tracked. Unfortunately AffiloTheme doesn't have the capacity to tell whether someone going through a link is a real person or not, so it'll report all traffic through the link.

If you added all those extra clicks back into Amazon it would send your conversion rate through the floor. It would be unnaturally low. So I'd be inclined to think that all those extra "clicks" are not real.

Long story short, it's probably better to stick to looking at the affiliate networks to see your clicks, rather than the affiliate redirects area of AffiloTheme.

Hmmm, I had not thought of the clicks not being real. That is a possibility. Well, I do use Amazon to check clicks and possible conversions - they are the one who counts :) So true about the conversion rate going through the floor if I added in the extra clicks. But you bring out a good point about bots. At one point I tried a fiverr gig to drive traffic to the site. Little did I realize (lesson learned) that the claims of being real traffic was very dubious at best. And most traffic that did come in seemed to be from Hong Kong. Well, that should be expired about now so maybe it will start reflecting true traffic. And true clicks.Thanks,

That is a good thought. In this case, all of the product links are going to the corresponding Amazon product pages.

I am in the process of making some changes and trying EasyAzon for some of the links, but I don't expect much difference. If there is a difference, I would guess that it comes from the product pop-up boxes when hovering over a text link. Time will tell.